Much attention has been paid in recent years to consumer retailing and ways to streamline retailing and maximize its profitability. The rise of the World Wide Web, for example, has prompted bricks-and-mortar retailers to try to find ways to compete with web-only retailers. Retailers have tried many approaches to keeping track of inventory, both so as to keep from running out of particular stock-keeping units (SKUs) and so as to let a consumer know whether a particular SKU is in stock.
A typical method of inventory tracking is the use of bar-code scanners at checkout counters 13 (FIG. 1). Each item purchased is scanned at the checkout counter 13. The scan information (typically a UPC or uniform product code) is used both to look up a price and to keep a record (in a database server 17) that a particular item has been sold. Restocking (through door 16, FIG. 1) involves identifying the UPC for newly stocked merchandise and making a record in database server 17 of the number of items restocked. In this way the retailer tries to keep track of the number of items in stock. It is rather like measuring how much water enters a bathtub and measuring how much leaves the bathtub via the drain, so as to work out how much water is in the bathtub at any particular moment.
This approach to measuring inventory relies on knowing the precise inventory at some starting point. This approach will become less and less accurate with the passage of time because of “inventory shrinkage”, defined to include theft by store employees and theft by customers.
A pure-play mail-order merchant is able to avoid theft by customers for the simple reason that customers are not allowed in the warehouse. Such a merchant will typically have a web site with a virtual “shopping cart” into which the customer “places” items of merchandise for purchase. At the time the customer selects an item, the mailorder shopping cart system will look to see if the item is “in stock and will annunciate any out-of-stock condition to the customer. This minimizes the risk of a customer being told that he or she will receive the merchandise promptly and then receiving it later than promised due to some out-of-stock condition.
As mentioned above, some bricks-and-mortar retailers have tried to win customers away from other retail channels by offering services that involve web-based ordering and in-store pickup. In a typical system, the customer visits a web site for a nationwide chain retailer, and selects an item of merchandise. The customer then indicates his or her geographic location, and the system checks the store inventory for the store or stores that fall within convenient driving distance. Assuming the item is in stock at a store that is acceptable to the customer, the customer places an order for the item.
Importantly, the customer is told not to travel to the store until after a confirming email message is received.
The next steps are not visible to the customer. Store personnel in the store go to the stocking location for the merchandise and “pick the item, transporting it to a secure location such as a customer service counter. Store personnel then enter a message into the system, indicating that the item of merchandise has been located and put in the secure location. Only then is the customer sent the confirming message.
The reason for the confirming message is, of course, that until store personnel have actually laid eyes upon the item of merchandise, there is no way to be sure that the item was actually in stock. The item could, for example, have been shoplifted the day before. Or at the time of restocking, stocking personnel might have mis-counted the items being stocked. Or the item might have been stolen by a store employee. Reinforcing all of these possibilities is the reality that the “bathtub” approach of counting items as they enter and leave the store is not a certain indicator of what is in stock and what is not.
More subtly, even if there were no shoplifting, no mis-counting, and no employee theft, there are things that could go wrong with a web-based order for in-store pickup. For example, the item which the customer desires to purchase may actually be physically present in the store and yet the store personnel whose task it is to “pick the item may be unable to find it. For example:                the item may have two or more intended stocking locations, such as a mid-aisle location and also an “end cap” 24 (FIG. 1), yet the store personnel may be aware of only one of the two locations.        the item may be out of its usual stocking location due to some error in stocking or restocking.        the item may be in a “back-stock” location (such as a high shelf or low cabinet) where is is not easy to see.        
In any of these situations, as well as other situations that can commonly arise, the store personnel whose task it is to “pick the item may not be able to find it. It will then not be possible to send the confirming message to the consumer. The sale will then likely be lost, because the consumer in frustration may instead purchase from a pure-play mailorder retailer or from a different bricks-and-mortar retailer.
Those skilled in the art will appreciate that there are other drawbacks to the system just described, in addition to the drawbacks discussed.
It would be extremely helpful if a system could be devised that would facilitate web-based purchase of merchandise from a bricks-and-mortar retailer for in-store pickup, that would avoid the drawbacks of previous systems. It would be still more helpful if such a system also enabled other economies and advantages to the bricks-and-mortar retail process.